DECLINE OF CHINOOK LIKELY TO CONTINUE

John HusarCHICAGO TRIBUNE

Wisconsin and Michigan fish experts told the Associated Press that anglers may face smaller chinook catches as severe decreases in the salmon population continue to plague the Lake Michigan fishing industry. From 1987 to 1988, the lake`s chinook salmon catch has fallen roughly in half, from 393,000 to 177,000 fish, according to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.

While no figures are available for 1989 and 1990, reports from nine Michigan ports show the decline continuing. Anglers caught 58 percent fewer chinook in 1988 than in 1987, and the catch fell another 34 percent in 1989, according to the Michigan DNR. Preliminary counts show chinook fishing was as bad or worse in 1990 than in 1989, said Richard Rogers, a Michigan DNR fisheries technician at Charlevoix.

Chinook salmon have been the traditional target of the fishery, accounting for 50 percent of Lake Michigan`s total catch by weight. Experts blame the decreases on the diminishing alewife population, a staple for the chinook.

Officials worry the declining fish numbers may hurt the economically important sport-fishing industry. Dan Talhelm, an economist at Michigan State University, said one 300-boat marina can have an annual impact of $2 million on a community. Another study by the Wisconsin Sea Grant, found that charter fishing in five counties brought $4.4 million to the state in 1987.

As salmon decline, anglers switch to other fish, including still-flourishing rainbow trout and steelhead. ''If we didn`t have those

rainbows, we`d have charter captains going down the tubes right and left. They and the steelhead have really saved our skins during this salmon problem,''

said Rich Bishop, a University of Wisconsin-Madison economist.

Alewives have grown increasingly scarce in Lake Michigan since 1981. The alewife population has always fluctuated from year to year, but the lower levels of recent years seem likely to continue, fish experts said. A U.S. Fish and Wildlife Survey study suggested that in 1989 alewives made up only 9 percent of the available prey near the bottom of the lake. The comparable figure in 1981 was about 50 percent. Chinook rely on adult alewives, while trout and coho salmon apparently feed on more abundant young, small alewives. - Finnish investigators are scratching their heads over the discovery of 300 decomposed reindeer in a wilderness tundra marsh. ''The animals either drowned or died of starvation,'' said Olavi Alapuranen, a member of a special police force which sorts out problems among Lapland reindeer herders.

He dismissed speculation the reindeer had been poisoned or killed by pollution from the Soviet Union. Thousands of reindeer had to be killed because of contamination from the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident. Nordic scientists recently have found that sulfur emissions from Soviet industrial plants in the Kola peninsula are harming the ecology of Lapland, where nomads herd about 350,000 reindeer in northern Finland, Sweden and Norway.

- Alarmed scientists have embarked on a study of the world`s frog population to see if they can explain why many species suddenly have gone extinct. Entire frog populations have disappeared in large parts of Europe, Canada, the western United States, Mexico and Central and South America. At the meeting in New Orleans, scientists concluded that the extinctions are not occurring in polluted developed areas but in pristine national parks, private preserves and wilderness areas, many in mountainous regions.

''We know that amphibians are among the better biological indicators of environmental degradation,'' said John Wright, curator of herpetology at the Los Angeles Natural History Museum and organizer of the meeting. ''Their disappearance tells us the world could be in serious trouble.''

He said frogs and other amphibians are environmental barometers because they are high in the food chain and integral to many ecosystems. Their numbers often are huge and their skin remains permeable to water and whatever affects it. Among suspected causes of the extinctions: depletion of the atmosphere`s ozone shield against deadly ultraviolet radiation from the sun, toxic heavy metals from acid rain, worldwide proliferation of pesticides and other environmental pollutants.

''The higher elevations are where there are severe declines if not outright disappearances,'' William Brown, president of the Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles and professor of biology at Skidmore College in Sarasota Springs, N.Y., told Dick Stanley of Cox News Service. ''It looks like almost anything at high elevation is in trouble and those are the

(species) we know the least about.''

Data collected this year show several species of frogs lost in the highlands of Ecuador and Venezuela. Most shocking to naturalists, Wright said, is the disappearance of a golden-colored toad, a hallmark animal used to raise money for a mountain preserve in Costa Rica.

''I tend to think it`s not natural,'' Wright said. ''Because it`s not natural for populations to go to zero. They`re not being replaced by something that`s outcompeting them.''